All is in the storytelling. If you take the basic premise "a ship stranded in the middle of nowhere, trying to find its way back to Earth" you can get two different shows such as 'Star Trek: Voyager' and 'Battlestar Galactica'. So I'll reserve my judgment after watching a few episodes.

I will support all genre shows. No matter what. Genre fans turning their noses up at new genre shows isn't very encouraging to those fickle folks at the studios. I'm just saying.

There is a lot of sci-fi and genre out this year. I plan on supporting as many as possible.

We all know that studios and networks hate to take risks, but they certainly love a popular bandwagon. If we want more Jossy goodness maybe we should encourage execs to think that genre is highly profitable.

I will support all good shows. If the writing is good, the characters are interesting and the story well told, I'm there. For one thing, vampires in daylight will make it a hell of a lot easier to actually shoot. (And let's face it -- Angel could appear on photographs ('Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?'), so they made it up as they went along then).

He is more of an ironic hero who has accepted who he is and what he is and his lot in life.

Cool, he's very obviously not Angel in any way from a character perspective. He's Spike ;-).

Not sure about the daylight thing, if you take too many of the mythological aspects away then what makes them vampires ? That said, it doesn't sound like they're totally free to move around in the sun (just that they can without blankets. Or catching fire ;). Sounds a bit like a book I read a while back, 'Already Dead', which is a sort of vampire/hard-boiled detective story where vampirism is a virus borne disease and vamps can stand very small amounts of direct sunlight but more than a few minutes and they'd be dead from what are, effectively, extremely malignant and aggressive tumours (not bad, writing was a bit clunky in places but i'll be checking out any follow-ups).

(and i'll be giving 'Moonlight' a fair chance, partly just because it's a rare genre show that doesn't get that from me and partly because of DG's involvement)

In Bram Stoker's original Dracula, vampires could move about in sunlight, they just weren't as strong. So it's not like they're taking anything away from mythology.

True but obviously vampires were around in myth (and fiction) long before Stoker (you didn't even need a wooden stake to kill his vampires) and in modern tellings daylight aversion of varying degree has become part of the mythology.

It's a fair point though that vampire mythology is very varied so there's a lot of leeway in which traits are used (not many modern tellings have shapeshifting for instance and who even remembers the 'not able to cross running water' thing ?).

Me, too, I'll give almost any genre show a fair shake. I can't get too excited yet, though. Maybe it's because my gut instinct is screaming "CANCELLED!!" I really don't expect this one to last, and once burned...

BUT vampire-, David Greenwalt- and Jason Dohringy-goodness will reel me in, I'm sure.

Anyone familiar with the writings of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro? Her vampire St. Germain is out in the daylight at any time. He just has of bit of his native earth in the soles of his his shoes or boots and he's good to go! I for one can't wait to see Moonlight and as for CBS - this is the network that actually listened to fans and brought Jericho back from the dead! Time will tell. Good luck David Greenwalt and kudos to CBS for running the show.

I will watch any project of a M.E. alum. I respect their work and talent so why not give it a try? I like the genre, obviously, and I hopefully it will fill a gap left by Angel being cancelled. I'm optimistic until proven otherwise.

I'll be watching. All those who can't get past this not being Angel, I'll bet you're the ones who couldn't watch Angel because it was no Knight Rider. Gees, time to move on. I love genre shows and I'm looking forward to this one. Oh yeah, and Jason Dohring? Even better. Even better than that would be a guest shot from James Marsters. How about it? Please?

It's a fair point though that vampire mythology is very varied so there's a lot of leeway in which traits are used (not many modern tellings have shapeshifting for instance and who even remembers the 'not able to cross running water' thing ?).

I do actually. The sunlight kills part of the vampire mythos seems to have originated with Nosferatu, so it's a fairly late addition, and probably was borrowed from traditional folklore ideas of ghosts having to return to the grave before sunrise (e.g. the wonderful ballad "The Wife of Usher's Well", one of my favorites).

Joss got rid of the having to sleep in coffins bit, as well as being able to crawl up a vertical wall, like a fly, so there's definitely pick and choose going on. Wasn't there also something about having to have earth from a graveyard in the coffin in Stoker's Dracula?

Reading all this makes me realize that in the vampire screenplays I've written, my mythology is pretty ho-hum. Vamps are good to go unless they get staked, come into contact with direct sunlight, get decapitated, or get splashed with holy water. At least I have this whole angle that while some want humans to die, the majority are relatively normal people who just use their abilities for a living. And drink the blood of humans.

Plus, I've got like a Queen and these emeralds and...yeah, my mythology could be zestier.

In the movie "The Hunger", with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie, the vampires could go around in the daylight without any problem, and they didn't have fangs, they had to slash their victims to feed. Also, they show up in mirrors. There wasn't too much killing of them so it never got into the mythology of staking or decapitating. The movie got pretty bad reviews, but I liked it, in a sort of terrified way.

Also, in terms of vampire myth-tweaking, don't forget Joss invented the whole turning to dust upon death bit.

That's very true and hopefully, that'll be the case for 'Moonlight'. And I suppose you could say that 'Star Trek: Voyager' and 'Battlestar Galactica' followed in the footsteps of 'Lost In Space', which followed 'Star Trek' and so on and so on......

All those who can't get past this not being Angel, I'll bet you're the ones who couldn't watch Angel because it was no Knight Rider.

Ha! And after laughing insanely....

I can't speak for anyone except myself but no, not really. I was a fan of Forever Knight (didn't care for how that series ended, either) but I never once assiocated Angel with it, even when others did. Perhaps it's because Angel grew out of Buffy and I knew the characters from the beginning, I'm not sure. For me, I'd have to say it's the way the WB handled the cancellation and that Not Fade Away didn't give me a complete sense of closure the way Chosen did....or maybe I'm still just supremely pissed because Joss killed Lindsey...I don't know. *huffs*

I actually love the vampire genre in the main, hell I even liked parts of Btvs the movie but the second I read what Moonlight was about, it was like um....lost my Slayer cool, and saw only Angel, which automatically equaled maxi-wig?

Being on CBS is an added bonus. At least it won't be canceled before the first commercial break has come and gone.

There is that. I have to say, the rapid way shows get the axe nowadays is very disturbing to me and it makes me not want to try anything new.

menomegirl: I hear you, and I agree. In fact, I've gotten quite fond of waiting until a series is over, buying the whole thing on DVD, and watching it that way. I wish more series were distributed all together, because it's a better use of my time, plus I don't have to wade through commercials which either gross me out or insult my intelligence.

By the way, that brings up another point. Hey TV advertisers, I'm not a mindless, slobbering drone who's waiting with baited breath to try your products, similar to the consumers your commercials portray. Treat me with intelligence if you're going to sell me something.

menomegirl: you've echoed my own thoughts exactly. I will try to give the show a chance, only because David Greenwalt is involved--- but after being so heavily invested in "Angel"-- It will be extremely hard to watch without (agreeably unfair) comparisons right off the bat. (no pun intended)

Why couldn't CBS just make a deal that no one could refuse to bring back "Angel" instead? (Do we reeeeeally need 'Bones'?) ;)

Not "watch just anything that's genre" Tonya J (i.e. irrespective of quality), more give "just anything that's genre" a fair chance (i.e. to show whether it's any good or not). Long experience with sci-fi originals means i'll normally skip them unless there's something worthwhile about it (e.g. a cast member i'm a fan of) but if a new show were to appear on there i'd probably give it a shot if the premise sounded interesting in any way, as I will with any genre stuff.

(over here, 'Firefly' has only ever been broadcast on Sci-fi, so you sometimes get unexpected gems on there. Course, a lot of the time you get stuff like 'Painkiller Jane', life is risk ;)